The Tao Te Ching on Ethics (Or, Does Ethics Subvert True Piety?)

When the great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality arise.
When wisdom and intelligence are born,
The great pretense begins...
[Tao Te Ching,18]

Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred ties better for everyone.

Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will rediscover filial piety and love
[Tao Te Ching, 19]

A common apologetic method is questioning how ethics can be grounded if there is no God to issue decrees. This relies on several questionable assumptions: is it really correct to say that what is good is simply good because God says so? What if God called cannibalism good? And why must ethics be grounded in God anyway? Why can't it be a production of humanity which, like art, needs no further justification. More damningly, isn't it selfish to love your fellow human being only because if you don't there are eternal consequences? Shouldn't an act of charity be done for its own sake?

The above excerpt from the Lao Tsu's Tao Te Ching quite strikingly proclaims morality is a form of degeneracy, one which inhibits true piety and love. When one acts charitably towards another because of some abstract ethical law, or some compulsion from above, true charity is lost. The act is not done for its own sake, for the unity it brings between two people, but for something else entirely. The recipient is only incidental to the moral agent's true purpose; he is a tool. He is used by the moral agent for his own selfish purposes, even if the agent recognizes the secondary benefit to the recipient. This can be seen in those evangelists who preach not primarily to save souls, but to use the act of saving souls for their own gain. Though the act appears to be the same as an unselfish act to the outside observer, it is subverted and corrupted. Therefore I submit: when charity is performed out of duty to an ethical code, or to a deity, true charity is lost. Only the outward shell remains.